"And Do You Know What My Smile Is Full of?"

Wednesday, August 10, and Thursday, August 11, 2011

Dear Suzy and Jonathan,

            I had the chance to talk to Kathy today, so I can report (in writing) about Wednesday, too, when she and Nan went.  Kathy can add anything she thinks is important.

            When Nan arrived, Mom said she had lost her teeth, so Nan asked an aide to help her find them, and the aide did, but she just handed them back as if they were ready-to-wear.  Nan asked whether they’d been rinsed, and the aide acted as if such a thing had never occurred to her, so Nan asked the aide to put them in some kind of cleaning solution, which the aide did before letting Mom pop them back into her mouth.

            Today when someone commented on Mom’s beautiful smile, Mom said, “And do you know what my smile is full of?”  I hoped she wasn’t going to say “Shit,” and she wasn’t.  Or at least she didn’t.  She said, “It’s full of false teeth.  At first I thought my dentist was charging too much, but now I don’t think so because they look real.”

            Kathy went by around 4:00 yesterday, and Mom said, “I’m glad to see you!” or something like that—warm but with no acknowledgement that Kathy had been away for a while.  Then Mom went right on playing BINGO.  Some people brought Carol back in the area after an appointment, and there was some commotion related to that, and Mom said to the man in charge something to the effect of “Let’s get on with it.  Don’t let those people disrupt our game.”  (Kathy, you can correct my misquotes!)

            When I arrived today at around 11:00, Mom was in the dining room with a lot of other residents, who were seated at the tables doing their coloring.  It was pretty quiet except for the music that was being piped in.  “You Are My Sunshine,” “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” “And the Band played On,” Bye Bye, Blackbird,” Billy Bailey” etc.  Mom said almost nothing but she pushed her sing-along book towards my corner of the table.  She was wearing Kay’s blouse with a lot of circles and flower designs, and she was coloring a picture that had circles and flower designs, and I was amazed at how unsuggestible she was because she wasn’t repeating any of the colors in her blouse.  Instead of dark blue, turquoise, green, and tan, she was coloring her circles pink, black and purple.  (After I commented on how she wasn’t repeating any of the colors in her –Kay’s—blouse, she did add some blue.) 

            Divina came over to our table and told me Mom had played the piano that morning, and Mom looked really annoyed by our chatter.  Mom had told me on Tuesday (sorry, I forgot to mention this) that she wanted some nail polish remover because her nail polish (applied by Sara, the concierge) had chipped.  So I had brought some, and I started to tell Divina that my mom’s nail chipped, so I was wondering where we could sit to take it off with the nail polish remover I’d brought, but before I could get beyond, “My mom’s nail polish is chipped,” Mom said as if really annoyed, “Don’t draw attention to it!”  But after she finished her coloring and she’d gone to the bathroom across from her room, we did go into the sitting room, and she asked Yatra, “Is the smell so offensive from nail polish remover that people would be bothered if we used it in this room?”  I thought that was pretty well articulated by someone who’d said very little until then.  Yatra said that residents weren’t allowed to have nail polish remover, but it wasn’t a problem for us to use it right there.  When I started applying it to Mom’s nails, Yatra said, “Isn’t it great to have wonderful children?” and I said, “It’s great to have a wonderful mother,” and Mom said, “We’re even,” and she smiled.  That’s when Yatra commented on her beautiful smile and Mom told her what it was full of.

            That was pretty much our visit.  I’d brought along an article on dogs and cats—It was actually called “The Battle of Dogs vs. Cats” as if there was a competition going and pet owners were going to trade in what they had if it didn’t measure up.  There were questions like “Which have more stamina?/are more agile?/are better hunters?/are the hardest working?—That would be cats--/live the longest/are the fastest?” etc.  So I was all ready to find out.

             I said, “Would you like to read an article about dogs and cats?” and Mom said, “No.”

             I asked why not, and she said, “Because I’m in a bad mood.” 

            I told her I was sorry and asked why she was in a bad mood, and she said it was because her nails were a mess.

            She had given the nail file I lent her back to me, and then she said, “Would you like to let me keep that, if you have another, as a gift?” 

            And I was overcome with generosity (Aren’t I going to give her five ballpoint pens for her 90^th birthday, after all?), so I let her keep it.

            She said she had to go to the bathroom, so I said goodbye and told her, “I’ll be back on Saturday,” and she said, “Good.” 

            We kissed goodbye, and then as I was punching in 4,3,2,1 #, she turned around in the hall and said “Goodbye” again and blew me a kiss.

            Backtracking—because the scene in the dining room was a nice one. 

            When “You Are My Sunshine” came on the second time, Divina started singing it, and a couple of us joined in.”  I knew only the first verse, but Divina and another person (was it an aide or was it Billie?) knew the second verse, and I only regret that it went like this:

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried.

Divina told me that Doris, who was usually so quiet, got agitated today, which is why she wasn’t in the dining room with the others.  Ada wasn’t there, either, but they both came in as Mom and I were leaving the area.  Joy was sitting at the table with Mom and Ella, who were coloring with great concentration, but she wasn’t participating at all—just staring. 

            But when I said, “How are you doing, Joy?” she said, “Fine.” 

            I keep thinking of how relatively alert the sisters are.  When I came in, May said, “Oh, you’re back again!”  Bobbie was at another table, and she’d sing along with some of the songs.  She was, as usual,  with Franz and  also with Jasmine, an aide, who was asking Franz how to say different words in German.  When she came to “I love you” Bobbie wanted to repeat that to Franz (even though, as Kathy points out, she’s about twenty years older than he is), and she thought that liebe sounded like liberty.  She said something I thought sounded like “That’s one of my favorite musicals,” so I wanted to know which it was. When I explained that I was always alert to mention of musicals but that now I realized that wasn’t what she’d said, she replied, “I’m sorry to disappoint you” in a really sweet way.  I told her “I love you” is as  good as “That’s one of my favorite musicals,” so I wasn’t disappointed. 

            I forgot to tell you that on Tuesday, Frank was in the hall, and when he saw me, he asked, “Are you a Dennis girl?  My daughters are coming to see me, and their last name is Dennis.”  I said, “Well, I’m happy to see you, but I’m not a Dennis girl.  I’m a Martin,” and he said, “That’s close enough.”

            Well, it’s nice to have Kathy back, even if she heads down to Pasadena tomorrow for Aunt Mary’s 96^th birthday on Saturday and won’t really be back until Monday.  I hope she has the chance to catch her breath next week!  At least she’s flying back, and maybe the flight attendants won’t spill milk on her this time, and if they do, maybe they’ll say they’re sorry.

I’m going back to campus tomorrow for a meeting and to show a new student (the friend of a friend) around campus. (I’m still trying to figure it out myself.  Jonathan, isn’t there a building on the Berkeley UC campus that people go into and never come out again?  I think we’ve got a couple.)   I go to a retirement workshop on Monday, and classes—15 units—start on Wednesday.  I’ll probably be seeing Mom Tuesdays and Fridays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays because of my schedule, but I have to say that I feel I have had the chance to catch my breath, and I’m really glad I had this extra time with Mom at a time when I wasn’t working or having to study.  It felt good. 

            Love,

            Tina/Mom

A Good Day for Mom, Out in the Garden, Wanting Pens for her 90th Birthday

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Dear Suzy and Jonathan,

            Mom was in pretty good shape today!  It was definitely one of our best visits.

            I arrived just as she was excusing herself from the full room of Perry residents, who had apparently been assembled to hear her play and maybe sing along.  (The music on top was Fur Elise, so I can’t be sure about the sing-along.)  Mom was standing and saying something like “I enjoyed being with you, but now I must go.”  In any case, she was being her gracious self.  I said, “Oh, I missed it!”  and Mom was willing to let me take a picture of her in the door of the room (where Franz peed two Sundays ago during the PBS Metropolitan Opera broadcast).  And someone called out, “Did she smile?”

            Then we went back to her room together.

            “She’s in there,” Mom told me, and I said, “Oh, dear.” 

            But Mom said, “That’s all right.  Just be quiet.”

            I heard Kay, who was lying on her (Kay’s) bed, saying, “They hate me.  They’ve always hated me, from the day I was born.”

            I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to interrupt or let her know I’d heard her, but it made me sad that she was attacking even herself. 

            Later, when I took Mom’s music to her desk and Kay saw me, I said, “Nice to see you, Kay,” and I really meant it in the sense of if she had to be there, I really didn’t want her to suffer any more than I wanted Mom to suffer, and she said something like “You’re a big fat liar.”  Or was that Al Franken?

            I’d just made some lemon bars (Grandma Evelyn’s recipe), but Mom, who usually gobbles down the sweets I bring her, said, “No, I can’t have things like that, and she’s sick.  She shouldn’t have it.”

            Mom and I went out in the garden without her even stopping by the bathroom, and I reminded her, “You love to be outdoors.”

            “Yes, I do,” she said, “and I like to be in the sun.”  (A nice contrast to last time, when she said, “But I love my bottom more.”)

            That surprised me because her eyes are kind of sensitive to light.  But we sat in the sunniest spot, on a bench in front of the fountain, and then I got out the book.  This time we were sitting side by side, so it was easier to look at the pictures together.

            She thought I had read a couple of stories  that I don’t think I had read, but I’ve always said I’d like to be at Aegis when my time comes.

            We read about the Dachshund and the piglet who were good friends, and when I came to the part that said the pig “quacked,” I said, “Quacked?  Isn’t it suppose to go oink oink?”     Mother turned the book to the front cover and looked at the author’s name.

            “Well, she’s pretty knowledgeable, so I guess she knows what she’s talking about,” Mom said.

            She probably does.  And if a piglet and a Dachshund are hanging out together, they’re probably not uttering the garden variety of sounds.

            Then we read about the donkey and the mutt, the elephant and the dog (which made it to YouTube a couple of years ago), ferrets and big dogs, a Golden Retriever and a fish..

            I circled parts that I thought were interesting (having that carnal relationship with a book the way Anne Fadiman’s family does), and Mom said, “I’m glad that you haven’t gotten too old not to write in books.”  I guess she was thinking of toddlers who take their crayons to their parents’ rare collections or, like Umesh, tear up all physics books competing with the one written by their father.  {Here I was referring to Jonathan’s friend Umesh, whose father Ramamurti Shanker, wrote an authoratative text on Principles of Quantum Mechanics and in the acknowledgement wrote “Little Umesh did his bit by tearing up all my books on the subject, both as a show of support and to create a need for this one.”  }

            On the subject of pens, Mom said, “I’m going to be celebrating my 90^th birthday soon—on Halloween—and that would be a wonderful gift if you think of it—four or five pens like this.”

            “We’re going to have a really nice celebration,” I said, promising more than ballpoint pens,  “because we all love you so much, and you’ve been an inspiration for us.”

            She said, “Well, who all is coming?  Do you mean the family?”

            I said yes.  Suzy, Kathy, Nan.

            “And there’s another…”

            “Ethel?”

            “Yes,” she said.  And there’s a guy…”

            “Jonathan?”  I asked.  “Javier?”

            “Well, I’d expect them to be there,” Mom said.  “But there’s another man bopping around.”

            I didn’t think she meant Franz of Aegis.  I suggested Karl, and she said, “Maybe that’s the one.”

            She might have meant Tom. {Kathy’s brother}

            “And the people across the street,” Mom said.  “But maybe if they brought their kids, that would be too many people.  We could have the kids in the morning, and the adults in the evening.  Well, we’ll see.”

            She didn’t mention “A Nightingale Sang at Berkeley Square,” though.  That was the song she used to say she and a group of friends were going to London to sing on her 90^th birthday.

            We stayed out in the garden a pretty long time, and she said she should really be getting back to work because they wouldn’t know where to find her if they needed her.

            But it was very enjoyable reading.  As you know, she’s sometimes made comments about the weird grammar (structure) of the sentences when she can’t follow them, and I was aware today that it gets very complicated when they’re talking about Bella and Tarra and you have to remember which is the dog, and which is the elephant.  Maybe it was when I started labeling the animals with their names that Mom made the comment about my not being too old to write in books. 

            At one point she said, “Let me read for a minute and see if that makes it easier for me.”    But after she’d read a couple of sentences, she said, “No, that works the opposite.  It makes it harder for me to follow.”

            But she enjoyed looking at the pictures and telling me how to pronounce German words like dachshund.  (Now it’s the only German words I know that doesn’t come from The Sound of Music or Cabaret.)   When we were wondering about the pronunciation of Macaque, she said, “Maybe I could get you one of those little dictionaries that you could carry around,” and I told her that I had a way of looking it up on my iPhone, but neither of us had the interest span that that required.  (I just looked it up online here at home, which you can do too.)

            Mother made the same comment she’d made before about the author:   “She must really have fun writing this book.”   Also, when we were identifying who was who among the animals, she said, “This is she.  This is her.  This is she,” as if she were trying to get it right, and I suggested that the grammatically correct was “This is she” but that every one said, “This is her.”

            I noticed that she was wearing the shoes I got her, and I asked her whether they were comfortable. 

            “Yes!  She said.  And I’d forgotten you got them for me.”

            At one point I said, “Well, let’s read one more before—“

            And she said, “Before we separate?”

            She also asked me where I came from to visit her.

            Did I say this was an especially nice visit?  Well, it was in the sense that Mom didn’t seem frantic, we were in the garden, and she seemed bright.

            Nan will go tomorrow, and I’m going to try to go really early on Thursday because I’d like to hear her play the piano.

            Once I start my classes, I think I’ll have to switch the days I go. 

            Do you know when Kathy is really going to be in Pleasant Hill?  I know she left Ireland today, but is she going to go to Pasadena before visiting Mom? 

            Love,

            Tina/Mom

"Gotta Go, Honey. The Cops Are Coming."

A Call to Mom, Monday, August 8, 2011

Dear Suzy and Jonathan,

                I’m not going in to see Mom today, but I wanted contact with her,  so since she told Dana I never come but I call on the phone, I called on the phone.

                When I asked her how she was doing, she said, “Not too hot.  The cops are coming.”

                I said, “Oh, dear!  What’s happened?”

                She said, “I don’t know.  We’ll find out when the cops get here.”

                I said, “Well, Mom, I wanted to tell you that I’m coming to visit you tomorrow morning around 10:00.”

                She said, “Well, that’s wonderful, honey!  I’ll be happy to see you.  But now I’ve got to go because the cops are coming.”

                So I let her go.

                Love,

                Tina/Mom

"Where Am I? How Did I Get Here? Where Do I Go from Here?"

Mom on Sunday, August 07, 2011

Dear Suzy and Jonathan,

            Suzy, how did things go with David on Saturday?  So nice of you to take him to the dentist when you have so much else to balance in your home and job.  (I know you won’t get this till tomorrow, when you go back to the office.  Any estimated time for the upstairs being completed?  I think you said that AT&T was switching on your phone service last Thursday?)  Jonathan, how did the volunteer work go yesterday?

            Today I got to Aegis around 11:20, and Mom and Kay were both in their room.  Kay was giving Mom a tongue lashing as usual, and when I came in and warmly, politely, and (remembering Jonathan’s advice to be calm, and remembering Mom’s comment that her daughter—meaning me—got “riled up”) calmly greeted them both.

            Kay responded by saying, “I’m not sure you should come around.  You’re a bad influence!”  She went on to say that Mom breaks things—things like her owl.  (It didn’t look broken.)  I sort of guided Mom out of the room but invited Kay to join us.  She said, “I don’t care what you do, but I was here first, and I’m older, and I should have some rights.”  I agreed, saying she definitely had some rights, and so did Mom.

            As we went out the door, Mom said, “I’ve got to get out of this place.”

            I suggested the garden.

            Mom said she needed to go to the bathroom, so we went out the 4,3,2,1 # door to the one around the corner, but it had a WET sign (which seemed to be using WET as an adjective, not a verb), so I took Mom to one we’d never before visited together way down the hall in the other section.  As soon as Mom came out, she said “I need to go to the bathroom,” and I reminded her that she’d just gone.  I led her out towards the beautiful garden, and she said, “There’s no bathroom out there.”

            I said, “No, but we’ll be very close to one, and you love the outdoors.  You love flowers.  You love beauty!”

            Mom said, “Yes, I love beauty, but I love my bottom more.”

            We saw someone with an adorable dog, and I hoped that would attract Mom’s attention, but she just grasped my wrist that way she has of communicating an urgent message, and we did one of the fastest walk-throughs the garden could ever have had.  We went back to the newly-discovered bathroom, but this time it was occupied, and the occupying force would not make an early withdrawal.  We made a tour of the “higher functioning” unit, and at one point Mom said, “Let’s get out of here.  I see someone I recognize.”

            “Want to say hello?”  I asked.

            “No!”  She said, and then the woman  (an aide) saw us, and Mom smiled her noblesse-oblige smile, and we returned to the Perry section.  Ada and Dory were already seated, so I thought we should join them early so we could have the possibility of some kind of response by the non-comatose, and that turned out pretty well.  Ada was at the table, and she was back to being Ada—very warm and bubbly and with a memory of about twenty seconds.

            Mom introduced me to Dory.  “This is my daughter,” and Dory woke up and smiled and nodded.

            “I think we’ve met before,” I said.

            Ada said to me, “I like your hair.”

            I said, “Thank you,” and she asked, “Is it natural?”

            I said.  “My hair is natural, but the color isn’t.”

            She laughed and said, “I just had to ask.”  Then she said, “I really like your hair!”

            “Have you ordered yet?”  Mom asked her, and I told her it was a menu fixe!

Mother suspected that they weren’t going to serve lunch.  It was probably already over.  I offered to change places with her so she could see them in the process of getting the trays ready, but she said she was too tired to move.

            I asked for a glass of milk for Mom, and Ada had a stash of pre-lunch things—a banana, which she said her kids always pronounced “blanana,” and a couple of graham crackers packages.  She gave one to Mom.

            “But don’t you need it?” Mom asked.

            “No, I’ve got another.”  She said.  So Mom accepted it and thanked her, and then pretty soon lunch was brought to the table. 

            Ada opened up her sandwich, which was iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and bacon, and said, “This doesn’t look very good to me.”  We worked together on cutting up her peach, which was very slippery (from a can—and they don’t provide knives or other deadly weapons), and then she opened up her sandwich and said, “This doesn’t look very good to me.  I have this banana.  My kids always pronounced it ‘blanana.’” 

            We laughed about this.  Many times. 

            And then she said, “I like your hair,” but instead of asking whether or not it was natural, she said, “I think you and I have a lot in common.” 

            I said, “Yes, I think we do,” and I looked at Mom to make her part of the “we” we were talking about.  I looked at Dora too, but she was fast asleep.  (I could have told her that I had things in common with HER!)

            Mother asked, “Where am I?  How did I get here?  How do I know where I am?”

            I answered those questions the best I could. 

            “Well, I hope you have a bucket of money because I didn’t bring a cent.”

            I told her the meals were included.  It was a package deal.

            “But where am I going to go from here?”

            I said we could go out into the garden or to the sitting room.

            “But eventually I’ll have to go back to the crabby lady.”

            We talked some more about how the crabby lady couldn’t help herself and maybe there was a way not to be bothered by her comments, but when Divina came over to the table, I told her Mom was worried about going back to the room.  Kay was usually out in the dining room by now, and she hadn’t come out.

            Divina said, “Don’t worry!  I’ll talk to Kay.”

            Mom said, “Better be careful.   This could boomerang.”

            Ada told me, “I like your hair!”  Then she noticed the banana near her plate and said, “My kids used to call this a blanana.”

            Divina told us that Kay was sleeping.  Mother and I excused ourselves, and Mom wanted to use the bathroom.  I peeked in and saw that Kay had awakened.  In the bathroom Divina helped Mom tear off the panty-pad closest to her body, which was wet.  Mother pulled up the other two and then pulled them back down, saying that she had to go to the bathroom.

            Divina offered to get her some prune juice and left to go get it.

            Mom pulled her pants back up and walked into the room and gave Kay a warm hello.

            Kay said, “Hello,” and before I could hear what else she had to say, Mom turned to me and said, “Bye!”

            On my way out, I saw Divina returning with the prune juice. 

            “We’ve talked about your mom and Kay,” she told me, “and we’re going to make a change.”

            I’m planning to see Mom tomorrow and Tuesday morning even though I’m a bad influence and I’m not sure I should be come around so often.  I’ll let Nan see Mom on Wednesday, and then I’ll go back to seeing her only two or three times a week after Kathy gets back on Wed. or Thurs.

            Love,  Tina/Mom+